


Seeing is Believing

by Ford_Ye_Fiji



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: But I had fun, Character Study, Gen, I was reading too many long winded books at the time, It's very run on sentence-y, John Childermass - Freeform, Lady Pole - Freeform, Magic, Mr. Honeyfoot - Freeform, One Shot, Other people do show up very briefly, Segundus is a dear, Sir Walter Pole - Freeform, Stephen Black - Freeform, and I am very nervous, and my writing paid the price, but none of them are really..., oh you'll see, this was very difficult to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 16:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12391629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ford_Ye_Fiji/pseuds/Ford_Ye_Fiji
Summary: A look into the life and thoughts of a Mr. John Segundus, the magician.





	Seeing is Believing

**Author's Note:**

> I have not been able to read the book! :( just a forewarning. And I took lots of writers liberty, and made stuff up and such. I'm just very nervous, but I really wanted to write something for this wonderful fandom and my favorite character.

Mr. Segundus did not know how he came to have such a sight, nor how none of his colleagues could see such impossible things. In the beginning he'd merely thought himself rather mad, which wasn't a comfort at all, but fortunately the stories he heard as a child soon quelled that notion. He became set in the fact that the strange things he sometimes glimpsed in the corner of his eye, were the remnants of magic. Growing up in the far north of England, he soon became strongly familiar with the stories of John Uskglass- the Raven King, and the faint whispered rumors that one day practical English magic would return.

At first, he did not want anything to do with this wild magic and the odd things he glimpsed. John as a child was a rather timid little thing, preferring to read his books rather than play with the local boys, and he grew into a careful timid man. He did not like the way a woman clothed in rags lurked in an alley gashing her mossy teeth and flashing her milky white eyes, he did not like to run in the woods for they whispered almost intelligible words into his ears, and he did not like the cemetery for ghosts flickered like spots or dying candles on the edge of his vision.

He did not tell his mother of these things, for her husband had already been shamefully taken away when the town found him drunken and shrieking in the square about some faint reoccurring dream he'd had of the wild white haired gentleman who wished to take his children away. His wife had not yet been with child.

John Segundus knew his mother already had the ravings of a madman, she did not need to know that his madness had been inherited.

He found his grandmother's books stored in a chest in the attic, one muddy, rainy, utterly ordinary English afternoon that would change his life forever. He had retreated to the attic after he found his mother crying in the parlor. Now his mother very much missed her husband as well as the steady income he had brought in, and being forced to rely on her irritable, cruel, and widowed grandfather was rather trying. Dealing with the rich man's contempt for her, her innocent young son, and her poor locked away mad husband was enough to make anyone despair. Small John Segundus, in the way that most children thought- even in the eighteen hundreds- believed that in someway he had caused his mother's distress, and so retreated to the attic. That was when he found his grandmother's chest and the books contained therein.

Always so excited at the prospect of uncovering new stories to occupy his day with, he opened the first weathered novel he came across. The moment he opened a page, the pictures began moving across the paper and laughing as if they stood before him! He closed that book with such haste that dust billowed out like a cloud.

For a few minutes, he was too frightened to read these books of magic, but the allure of stories chased him back into carefully flipping the book open and quickly covering his face with his hands for fear of what might spring from the dried ink. Nothing happened, and he found himself reading the book. It's words were very peculiar, and the pictures were thankfully behaving themselves, as they told a history of cruel faeries and magicians wielding practical magic and the Raven King.

The art and history and the words of magic soon enchanted him, and to his mother's harried dismay, her son grew up to be a 'magician', but not a practical one, for magic had not yet been returned to England and, like a person looking out a window at wonderful weather they could not delight in, he could not partake in the practice of practical magic.

Then, Mr. Norrell and Jonathan Strange strode into London, crates of magical books and spades of practical magic carried with them. Mr. Childermass following his master loyally, with angry storm-cloud brows and a swath of shiny black magic trailing behind him like the foamy wake of a ship. Segundus remembered reminding himself to ask Mr. Childermass if he knew that he practically breathed magic, but Mr. Norrell's amazing collection of magical books he'd long thought lost throughly distracted him from the peculiar manservant.

(Mr. Segundus did not know Childermass recognized a kindred spirit within the slight meek magician, someone who had interacted with what little could still move within the barren world of English magic. At first, Childermass did not know why this particular person was different, but there was something in the slight widening of his already wide anxious eyes that made Childermass feel as if he was suddenly an object of intense scrutiny, and as a man accustomed to hiding in the shadows, he was greatly unnerved. As someone who wanted, and excelled at remaining unnoticeable, it took something truly out of the ordinary for a person to take such notice. It was only when Childermass stood and asked Segundus curtly to sign the contract outside of Notre Dame, that he found out why. Childermass was sensitive to magic in many ways, but he could not see it for the life of him. He could, however, feel it thrumming in the depths of his bones, but he could not see the affect of it in the waking world. When he stood merely a foot away from the amateur magician, he could sense the slight tingle of magic hidden deep away. To add to his suspicions, the way Mr. Segundus's eyes kept sliding off of him and peering at something behind him, made Childermass understand that this small unassuming unsure man with a deep love of the arcane arts could see far more than he let on.)

Indeed, Mr. Honeyfoot, a magician who also adored magic- though perhaps not as deeply as his colleague, sensed something rather off about Mr. Segundus. The two became fast friends, both of them bonding over their similar opinions. Mr. Honeyfoot for all intents and purposes taking the curious mild mannered youth under his wing, though Mr. Segundus seemed to disagree on the youth part of that notion.

With the return of practical magic to the Christian world, Segundus saw more and more odd things that seemed to be more of faerie than anything else. The lady in the glittering blue dress, strange men with wooden fingers, his pet Raven who's eyes seemed to glow faintly green at times and who's avian caws seemed to echo like human words.

Then, after the swift shut down of their still young school of magic, the equally young Lady Pole came into their charge. At times she tried to speak of her ailment, but nonsense flowed out of her lips like a river. That started the first of the suspicions Segundus had that Lady Pole was not mad, but merely under an enchantment. For when she spoke, a rose clogged her mouth and her words became nonsensical jumbles, sentences that seemingly had no rhyme or reason to them. It was rather distressing, the mad woman almost weeping with frustration and distress for she could not speak past the blood red rose in her mouth. That was what made him look deeper and try to listen to the stories that did make it past the symbol of silence and into the Christen world. He told Mr. Honeyfoot of his phantasmagorical visions, for how could he keep such a thing from one of his oldest friends? This was a wise decision, for Honeyfoot helped him in many ways. In his and Mr. Honeyfoot's subsequent investigations and his own strange vision of the Rose, they found evidence of a cruel phantom of a faerie dancing throughout the fairy tales that spilled from Lady Pole's lips.

Then the letter from Jonathan Strange arrived from Venice for Lady Pole and she would not wake up. A blanket of blue shimmered over her, some sort of magic kept her asleep. Whether it was the doing of Jonathan Strange or the faerie that had initially cursed her, he did not know. Following the letter, Sir Walter Pole came to visit and Stephen Black, his butler. Who, Segundus had also seen wearing the Rose.

Sir Walter was absolutely furious that his loyal servant was not as faithful as he'd been led to believe, and he reamed into the poor trembling man quite angrily. When the butler tried to explain himself worry and fright thick in his manner, Segundus to his horror, looked up eyes wide as he recognized the flow of fairy tales pouring from his lips like a waterfall of nonsense. There was that wretched rose blocking those strange secrets from escaping and laughing at him and his utter inability to stop it.

But he was seized by a sudden fit of determination, he looked to Honeyfoot at that moment, and the older man's surprise and confusion only spurred his thoughts onward. Whatever faerie had taken hold of the young Lady Pole, and now Stephen, Segundus would not allow him to succeed.

He would fight that terrible sprite to his last breath if he had too.


End file.
